


Life is Hockey, Hockey is Life

by Sophie



Category: Hockey RPF, Pittsburgh Penguins RPF
Genre: Language Barrier, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:55:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8888179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sophie/pseuds/Sophie
Summary: Jaromír doesn't really consider the possibility of playing in the NHL until he sees Mario Lemieux play at the 1985 World Hockey Championship.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [danaste](https://archiveofourown.org/users/danaste/gifts).



> Happy holidays! I was really happy when I saw my assignment and writing this made me love Jaro more than before. I kind of wish there were more fics with him and Mario now :)
> 
> I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> A huge thanks to my beta <3

Some of the other boys on Jaromír’s team thinks he’s weird. Some of them even tell him with the bluntness of any ten-year-old hockey player. Jaromír grins and answers, “Yes, but I’m a better hockey player than you.”

Some adults also think that he takes hockey too seriously, but the only ones who think that are the ones who don’t understand just how good Jaromír really is.

He knew when he was eight that he was going to be a hockey player. It wasn’t just that Jaromír’s father had been telling him for years already. It wasn’t just that he enjoyed hockey more than anyone else his age —or anyone else he knew of any age, really. He just knew that hockey was going to be his life, and he decided there and then that if hockey was going to be his life, he had better give his life to hockey right back.

He has a list of places where he wants to play professionally all made up when he’s twelve, and that list doesn’t include any league in a capitalist country, and certainly not in the NHL. It’s not that he isn’t interested, exactly. It’s… Well, his father is the reason why he’s going to play hockey professionally, and Jaromír wants to please his father. Or, at least, doesn’t want to make him freak out too much, and he thinks that defecting to the US will probably make his father freak out.

So the NHL isn’t really an option.

Except that the 1985 World Ice Hockey Championships are in Czechoslovakia, so of course he’s watching the games on TV. And his country is in the same group as Canada, so of course he sees the Canadians play.

It’s the first time he sees Mario Lemieux play and he’s completely enthralled. It’s the best thing he’s ever seen in his life. For a few days after the end of the Championships, he remembers Mario Lemieux more vividly than he remembers the Czechoslovak win.

The NHL still isn’t officially on his list, but he thinks about the Penguins and about Mario Lemieux at night.

He thinks about Mario Lemieux even after he starts playing professionally for Kladno in 1988.

Except that the communist regime in Czechoslovakia collapses two months before he turns eighteen, six months before the first NHL draft for which he would have been eligible —the first NHL draft for which he _is_ eligible. He doesn’t really have enough time to process that he could be leaving his country next year if he’s drafted.

Scouts from the NHL start showing up at his games even though they’re on the other side of the world. He’s kind of overwhelmed.

The first scout to seek him out and talk to him is with the Detroit Red Wings and has such a strong accent that his Czech is hard to understand.

Jaromír can hear his heart thudding in his chest the whole time, but can’t hear much of what the scout is telling him.

He finds himself shaking his head. “Sorry, I’m playing here already. I’m thinking about the NHL, but not so soon.”

 _Not now, not so soon_ becomes his default answer to anyone from the NHL asking him about the upcoming season. That is, until someone from Pittsburgh calls and asks if he’s thinking about coming over to the NHL for the 1990-91 season.

“I’ll be there tomorrow if you draft me,” he answers right away.

He pays for a plane ticket, finds a translator, and shows up to the draft. He’s drafted fifth by the Pittsburgh Penguins.

*

The first time he meets Mario Lemieux, his hands are sweaty, he’s trying not to look star struck, and he speaks maybe a hundred words of English and ten words of French – not to mention that a lot of the English words and all of the French words are swears or sex-related so probably not useful for making the right first impression on Mario Lemieux.

He figures he’ll speak with his hockey, but Mario doesn’t start the season with the team because of his back. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway because it turns out Jaromír can’t play hockey very well when he’s homesick and wondering nearly every day why he moved to a country where he can’t understand anyone. He played for a perfectly good team back in Kladno, one where he could understand the coach’s directions, even.

He starts waking up in the middle of the night several times a week, and the only thing that helps is to drive to the rink and practice alone for a few hours, like that’s what’s going to finally break his point drought.

One night, nearly two months into the season, Mario is at the rink when Jaromír walks in. It’s weird and unexpected. Jaromír freezes and is about to leave without being seen, but seeing Mario play, even alone at low intensity, is electrifying. Being able to watch Mario on his skates, stick in his hand…

He stays just a bit too long in the end, and he knows he can’t just leave when his eyes meet Mario’s.

“Oh,” Mario says. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Jaromír echoes. _Shouldn’t you be at home recovering?_ , he kind of wants to ask, but he doesn’t know the words.

They both stare at each other for a moment in the cold of the arena.

“Practice?” Mario offers finally.

Jaromír _can_ speak with hockey after all. Playing one-on-one with Mario Lemieux is the most amazing hockey he’s ever played, exhausting and exhilarating. He’s grinning, and his lungs are on fire when Mario starts slowing down.

“You’re good,” Mario tells him. Jaromír can tell that he’s not just saying this in surprise or to flatter him; he’s trying to express a bigger idea with as few words as possible. Jaromír can tell because he does the same, and even though Mario’s English is leagues above his, it’s also far from perfect. Jaromír wouldn’t understand anything too complicated anyway.

“Yes,” Jaromír agrees.

“You’re happy now. You don’t smile when I see you play.”

What was left of Jaromír’s grin leaves his lips as he shrugs. “Hard here.”

“The NHL?”

Jaromír shrugs again because, well, not _exactly_. “America,” he answers. “English.”

“Oh…” Mario’s eyes open just a bit wider and he nods. “Yeah. I get that. But I had… other Québécois were here.”

Another silence stretches until Jaromír says, “Thanks. I be good. Time.”

“Yeah, okay. You want to come back tomorrow night? Here?”

“Late?”

“Yes, we both have to sleep tonight.”

Jaromír shakes his head. “Tomorrow. Late? Hour?”

Mario gets it. “Eleven o’clock?”

“Okay,” Jaromír says, smiling again.

As they remove their skates, Mario glances at Jaromír and asks, “Could you… not tell anyone I was out practising tonight? I’m feeling better, and I think I’ll come back next month anyway.”

Jaromír stares blankly.

“No practise for me,” Mario tries again, and points vaguely at his back.

Jaromír’s eyes widen, and he thinks he understands. “Okay,” he says, nodding.

“Thanks.” Mario smiles.

“You’re welcome,” Jaromír answers automatically. It makes Mario laugh, and Jaromír smiles in return, looking fondly at his captain.

Jaromír is there early the next day out of —and there’s no way to hide it— enthusiasm. He’d never really practised with Mario before, after all, and it won’t be the same even when Mario is cleared to play because Jaromír doesn’t think he’ll ever get 100% of his captain’s attention on him again.

He’s getting out of his car when he sees Mario turn into the parking lot. He doesn’t exactly wait for him, but he does take his time getting his bag and sticks out of his car.

“Hey,” Mario says when he catches up to him. “Locker room?”

“Hey,” Jaromír answers and isn’t sure what the rest was. He’s heard the words before, but really, he’s heard half the words being used around him before, and he doesn’t feel it puts him any closer to making out any meaning out of them. He smiles and keeps on walking towards the rink.

Mario doesn’t look at him like he’s an idiot, smiles back, and continues, “Changing room? Dressing room?”

Jaromír knows that he’s trying out synonyms, which is actually nice and considerate, although in this case, not helpful. He laughs self-deprecatingly and shrugs.

“They’re the only synonyms I know,” Mario continues, too many words too fast to really be directed at Jaromír. “Just— come on.” He gestures to follow him, and at least _that’s_ something Jaromír can understand.

Mario leads them to the dressing room, and _ooooooh, that was the word,_ even though they could have just put on their skates on the player benches. But if Mario likes it better here, why not. Jaromír wouldn’t have dared to ask someone to open the dressing room as a rookie (and possibly wouldn’t have had the words to ask anyway), but Mario’s the captain and sort of a hockey god. He can do whatever he wants, basically.

Jaromír lets Mario set the pace and the speed and takes breaks when Mario wants them. The entire time, he’s torn between feeling like he’s going to be an accomplice to the permanent destruction of Mario Lemieux’s back and feeling like _this_ is why he moved to America and everything so far has been worth it after all.

“Alright, we’re done,” Mario announces about an hour later.

“Okay,” Jaromír agrees. He thinks he could go on forever, but he also has a feeling that this has already been too long for Mario.

He’s high on adrenaline as if he’d just played a game that had gone into overtime, and he fidgets as he removes his skates back in the dressing room. He completely misses that Mario is getting undressed until he looks up to say something and gets a very good view of Mario removing his underwear and pulling a towel out of his bag.

Jaromír has seen many naked men in his life. Such is the fate of any male athlete, really. He’s been playing professional hockey for several years, and his worries about being outed by staring at someone in the dressing room went away a while back. He’s come to dissociate naked men in the dressing room from naked men in any other situation. Probably some people would say it’s because it’s supposed to be _work_ and work is pretty unsexy, generally speaking.

Mario Lemieux, however, is special enough that Jaromír’s usual neutrality in the face of gorgeous hockey players wearing very few clothes is destroyed entirely.

And there’s no way that Mario’s going to miss Jaromír’s lingering stare because they are alone right now and he has no one else to look at.

“Shower?” Mario asks, his tone not any different than usual, even though he can’t have missed Jaromír looking.

Jaromír doesn’t have a towel other than the small one he uses for his blades, and he certainly doesn’t have any change of clothes because he wasn’t expecting access to the dressing room. Taking a shower will just be awkward. He won’t be able to dry himself and will have to put his sweaty clothes back on afterwards.

“Jaromír?” Mario presses on, pointing to the shower stalls, clearly assuming Jaromír doesn’t know the word ‘shower’ yet.

“Okay,” Jaromír says because he’s an idiot, and also eighteen years old, and most of all, he is pretty sure Mario _wants_ him to say yes. He and Mario can’t communicate with words very well, but the hockey’s been good, and _this_ … Jaromír isn’t sure if picking up is maybe vastly different in America, but he doesn’t think so.

Mario walks into the showers as Jaromír undresses quickly, done at the same time he starts hearing the water hit the tiled floor. He’s half-hard when he joins Mario, something that surprisingly doesn’t worry him much at all. If he wanted to lie to himself, he’d say it’s because his adrenaline was still high.

Mario is already soaping himself up, his back turned, when Jaromír walks into the showers. He gets to stare unabashedly for a few seconds at Mario’s ass, something he never does in showers after hockey and never thought about when he fell asleep to images of Mario back in the Czech Republic. Now, those nights seems like a lot of wasted opportunities.

Mario looks over his shoulder at him, making Jaromír glance up. Their eyes meet, and Mario turns towards Jaromír enough that he could be staring at his cock if he wanted to, but that seems a bit _too_ inappropriate. Just a bit.

Mario holds their stare and then very purposefully raises his eyebrows. There’s no way that that isn’t an invitation. No way. Jaromír has been living with an indecent amount of cultural clash every day since he moved to Pittsburgh, but _that_ is an invitation, and he’s accepting it.

He walks up to Mario, suddenly breathing hard. Mario’s only a few centimeters taller than him, but he can feel the difference more and more as they get closer to each other.

He has no clue who kisses who first. It’s immediately frantic, groping at each other and grinding with no one really in charge. Mario bites at his lips; Jaromír gets a hold of Mario’s ass probably hard enough to leave red marks for a bit. He thinks he might be able to come from this, which he _refuses_ to do, especially with Mario Lemieux. He would probably have to hide in shame for a week.

So he gets hold of Mario’s cock and starts stroking fast and hard, helped only by the water still falling steadily over them.

“Fuck, yes,” Mario groans, leaning into Jaromír’s neck and reaching for Jaromír’s cock himself —which really was the goal here. Jaromír was counting on this to avoid looking too stupid when he comes.

It doesn’t take long at all, pulling a yell out of Jaromír and making his knees weak. It’s fine, though, because he just lets his legs fall under him and kneels in front of Mario, taking his cock in his mouth in one swift move.

Mario lets out a surprised sound, but gets with the program. He grabs onto Jaromír’s hair and starts thrusting into his mouth right away, also obviously pent up and close to his orgasm. Jaromír just lets him do it, using next to no technique. It takes less than a minute before Mario is pulling out of his mouth and stroking himself a couple of times to come on the tiles.

Jaromír wonders for a second if he’s supposed to stand up at this point, but Mario joins him on the floor.

“C’était incroyable. Tu es incroyable,” he says, and Jaromír doesn’t understand, but he thinks it was actually French, not English.

He chuckles and answers in Czech, “We should do this again. I never even jerked off thinking about you; there’s a lot to catch up on.”

The Czech makes Mario laugh as if he’d understood, even though he obviously didn’t.

“Good?” Mario asks Jaromír.

Jaromír nods.

“We’re going to Hartford this weekend,” Mario continues, speaking slowly to the point where Jaromír basically understood what he just said. It seems like a non-sequitur, though. “Practice Monday night?”

And —oh. _Yes_ , please. “Eleven hour, night?” Jaromír offers immediately.

It becomes a thing where they practice together a few times a week and then have sex in the showers afterwards. It helps Jaromír’s mood, which was getting terrible. Sex isn’t a magical cure, even with Mario Lemieux, but he doesn’t go to sleep _every night_ wishing he was still in the Czech Republic. The problem is that he still can’t understand the coaches, still feels like the outsider he is, and he still can’t _score_.

In mid-December, the Penguins trade Jim Kyte for Jiří Hrdina, and suddenly Jaromír has someone on the team who whispers to his ear what drill they’re doing, translates what teammates say, makes jokes that Jaromír can laugh at. He’s a veteran, too, and he gives advice that Jaromír is happy to follow (well, he follows _most_ of the advice, anyway).

Jaromír goes out with the team after a win for the first time in nearly a month only a few days after Jiří’s arrival and he doesn’t hate it.

He scores for the first time in a month a few days after that, which he _really_ doesn’t hate at all.

Getting dressed at the end of their nights, Mario says, “So are you and Jiří friends?”

Jaromír frowns, confused. “Jealous?” he asks, dubious.

“No, no. Does he help? With… English being hard.”

Jaromír remembers their conversation that first practice together, and his eyes go wide. “Yes,” he answers eventually. He’s wondering if Mario made the trade happen for him, but that seems… unlikely. Even for Mario Lemieux, God of Hockey. Players just don’t meddle with trades.

“Good,” Mario says, pleased.

*

Jaromír knows that Mario has a girlfriend, but he doesn’t meet her until the Penguins Christmas party. Her name is Nathalie, and she’s very pretty. She smiles easily, and her English isn’t much better than Jaromír’s, which makes him like her instantly.

Mario has never mentioned her to Jaromír in their half-dozen private practices and, more specifically, hasn’t warned Jaromír away from her at the Christmas party. She winks and grins at Jaromír when they meet and shake hands, and Jaromír can see Mario’s amused smile. They’re not in the right environment to make it clear that Nathalie knows about Jaromír and Mario’s relationship, so it’s the best they can do without using any words. It’s still pretty clear.

Jaromír had been wondering, in the back of his mind, about Nathalie’s situation —about if she was being cheated on by Mario, or if she was completely aware and her presence in Mario’s life was on purpose, efficiently discouraging any possible rumours about Mario’s sexuality. It turns out it’s the latter, and Jaromír is a little relieved.

They spend a lot of time together at the party, basically playing charades to communicate, and Jaromír is thoroughly charmed.

“Mario!” she calls over. “Invite-le à souper! Dis-lui que ma lasagne est géniale.”

“She wants you to visit our house,” Mario translates. “She makes a good… lasagna? Pasta and–”

Jaromír’s eyes light up. “Same word, same word,” he interrupts quickly. “Love visit. Love lasagne.”

“Great!” Nathalie says.

Her smile really is the warmest thing.

*

Mario still isn’t back to playing, but he keeps talking about feeling better and thinking it can’t be much more than a few weeks now. Jaromír practices with him often enough to think he’s telling the truth about it. He can’t wait to actually play with Mario, hoping they might end up on the same line for a moment at some point in between line changes.

However, he wonders if things are going to change when Mario can practice with the team again and doesn’t need clandestine ice time in the middle of the night with Jaromír.

He wonders more and more things about Mario that he doesn’t make himself ask because he wouldn’t be able to find the words to actually talk about real, important things in English. He certainly can’t ask Jiří to… what? Sign a non-disclosure agreement and _then_ translate as Jaromír and Mario talk about the state of their relationship?

He tries to find the words in his head and to order them in sentences. He thinks he finds a way to bring up his concerns that doesn’t require too much vocabulary and finally decides to try and bring it up before their first clandestine practice of 1991.

“Have think,” he tells Mario while tying his skates, not looking at him. “I have girlfriend?”

Mario is silent for long enough that Jaromír has the time to finish tying his skates and has to look up at him. He is clearly somewhat lost and very confused.

“You have a girlfriend? Now?”

“No, no,” Jaromír says, realizing he probably just fucked up on verb tenses. “Question. I girlfriend?” he repeats, exaggerating his intonation so the question is impossible to miss.

Mario is usually pretty good at understanding Jaromír’s broken English, and Jaromír had counted on that. Now, though, he thinks Mario could understand him mostly because all they ever talk about is hockey.

“I’m a boyfriend,” Mario answers, uncertain. This is not at all where Jaromír was going with this, but now he’s completely sidetracked.

“Really? We boyfriend?”

“Yeah, sure,” Mario says, shrugging. Jaromír grins like an idiot immediately before remembering what he really wanted to know.

“Good,” he says, just so Mario knows that he agrees with this wholeheartedly. “But. No. Future. I girlfriend future? Like you Nathalie?”

“Oh!” Mario exclaims, and Jaromír thinks he’s finally managed to get his point across. “Do you want to date Nathalie?”

And no. No, he didn’t manage anything. He groans.

“No date Nathalie. You date Nathalie. Girlfriend for you, Nathalie. Girlfriend for me… rozdílný,” he finishes, not finding the English word for ‘different’. He rattles his brain, so he can say ‘not same,’ but can’t find the words for that either.

Mario doesn’t say anything for a while, for long enough that Jaromír lets out a long sigh and gives up.

“Practice?” he asks. He should have stuck to speaking hockey.

“No, wait,” Mario says, raising a hand. “Do you mean… a fake girlfriend? A media girlfriend?”

Oh, thank God.

“Yes!” Jaromír says emphatically, nodding. “I have girlfriend? For media?” he asks again, more confident this time.

“Nathalie is my real girlfriend,” Mario says after a beat.

Jaromír frowns. It makes Mario start explaining, a bit too fast and with sentences that are definitely too long.

“I was with Nathalie for a long time. I thought you knew when we started having sex, right? And if you know I’m with Nathalie, you know we date other people too, and there’s no problem.” He rubs at his eyes. “I’m sorry if you… I’m sorry. I don’t know how to explain, and I think you know, and I don’t need to explain.”

Jaromír barely gets the gist of this, so he answers, “Talk is hard.”

Mario laughs. “Yes,” he agrees. “Do you care? That I’m dating Nathalie?”

Jaromír feels like he hasn’t had a very long time to think about this and to sort out his emotions, yet. He shrugs. “We two. Date?”

“If you want,” Mario says, returning the shrug.

“Okay. Nathalie know we two date?”

Mario nods, his eyes sharper. “Of course.”

“Not care, I think,” Jaromír says. “I think more,” he adds.

“That’s fine,” Mario assures him, smiling like a captain trying to encourage his rookie.

“And I date Nathalie if want?”

This makes Mario laugh. “If _she_ wants. Ask her next week during lasagna.”

Jaromír grins, a bit devious. “Yes, okay. Practice now?”

It’s the shortest practice they’ve had together and the first one that is pretty much a pretext for the following sex in its entirety. 

In the afterglow, Mario confirms the date and time of the dinner with Nathalie. It makes Jaromír realise they don’t really _need_ a pretext anymore.

Still, they’ll continue their clandestine hockey practices as long as Mario is up for them because Jaromír is never going to turn down time to work on his hockey skills.


End file.
